Take a moment to SLOW DOWN.
PAUSE rather than collapse.
SETTLE...
into...
yourself.
What is the rhythm of your heart today?
What are you in relation to?
What is stirring to life within you?
Art by Susan Seddon Boulet
After years of exploring my relationship to the seasons I am beginning to notice a familiar rhythm that resides within this transition from autumn toward winter; a particular pulse or sensation that follows me year after year. It begins with a deep desire to slow down. To draw inward. To WAIT. To wait and LISTEN for the still, soft voice from the deep.
For me, Winter IS the season of new VISION, yet the dance toward that vision - toward the Call - can feel very much like dancing in the dark. These days I can feel the call toward something new; a liminal space where something is stirring and being called toward birth. Tension arises, though, when I notice the felt sense but am unable to see or name it. What is coming to life through me? Where am I being called? Who or what am I becoming? The questions are often more interesting than the answers for these are the dark phases of creation. Where impulse is born. Where longing is met.
I know this place - very well - in my body. It is my mind that struggles to grasp and understand. The dance teaches me that, within these dark moments of creation, the most benevolent thing I can do is WAIT. Be patient. Listen. Trust and have faith in the unknowable; in the unfathomable act of not knowing.
I turn my gaze inward to notice the inner pulse...the IN-pulse within my body. Wait. Listen. Resisting the tendency to move too quickly, I rest with awareness, waiting...patiently...for the inner pulse to become clear. For the call to action to arise. And from this place, rooted deeply within, I move and trust that what takes form through my body and through the dance will transport me to new understanding and experiences. It always does. Inevitably.
In many wisdom traditions, when a person undergoes initiation, the Call is the same. One must set about re-membering what has been lost, make radical changes to the way one lives, then
come back together in a new way. This often requires enormous courage because we are up against our own fears and limitations, as well as those of the collective. The work can be slow and arduous. Requires patience and kindness to move through layer upon layer upon layer.
Imagine dancing through doorways, PAUSING at each threshold and listening at each point of arrival. What are you in relation to? What is releasing or becoming clear? Who are you becoming? If, like me, you cannot yet see or hear, keep arriving at the door. Keep showing up. And trust that each time you release or clarify it is in service to the vision...to SEEING and hearing the call of the heart. The call of what is arising anew. The call for a vision.
To be continued....
With great appreciation and love for your witnessing,
Teresa